Bram, Word document
It was mind-boggling how far the conveyancing process could progress without the need for face-to-face contact with a lawyer. Graham Jenson of Dixon Boyle & Co in Crystal Palace was selected by Mike, of course, presumably for his lack of reputation for excellence (indeed, on the legal ratings website I looked at, Jenson did not score spectacularly in client satisfaction). Like Rav, he was not part of our conspiracy and so once again I was simply to proceed as if the sale were happening normally. I set up a new email address in the name of A and F Lawson, shared the password with my overlords, and gave my pay-as-you-go number to Jenson and his trainee.
By early December, I’d collated the required paperwork and proofs of ID, filled in all the questionnaires, and supplied a mortgage redemption figure, which would be paid automatically on completion. Documents were shuttled in and out of the Trinity Avenue filing cabinet as I came and went according to the bird’s nest schedule. (In the unlikely event that Fi would want to look up something I’d removed, I knew she would simply assume it had been misfiled.) To avoid having packages arrive at Trinity Avenue in the post – I already knew to my cost that Fi had no qualms about opening mail addressed to me; well, these were addressed to her too – we agreed that Wendy should pick them up from the solicitor’s receptionist in person, using her practised Fiona Lawson signature whenever called for. She would then hand-deliver them to me at the flat and wait for me to add the requisite information or co-authorization before returning them to the solicitor at the next opportunity. The few documents that required witnesses to our signatures were rerouted to Mike to add whichever fabricated names and professions he saw fit. In the meantime, Wendy supplied Jenson with details of the holding account that would feed the closing payment to whatever offshore alternative Mike had opened using his fabled dark web contacts.
All of which was both insanely risky and insanely easy – considerably easier than it would have been had none of the conspirators owned fifty per cent of the property. That was the genius of the scheme, I have to hand it to Mike.
Though the buyers’ queries were minimal, their mortgage company required an on-site valuation, a non-negotiable element that could be scheduled only for a weekday. Though not without its stresses, this was child’s play compared to the open house: I arranged to work from home and requested that the surveyor come at noon, so he’d be gone well before Fi or her mother could return with the boys after school. The street was quiet, but I had prepared an excuse about roof repairs should anyone approach me with questions.
By mid-December, draft contracts had been drawn up and sent to the buyers’ solicitor.
Good work, amigo, Mike texted me, and there was a disorientating moment when I completely forgot myself and experienced pleasure in his rare praise. Then the horror returned, more oppressive, more sanity-eroding than ever.
The drugs weren’t working yet, evidently.
‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:30:45
I know it’s going to sound like I was making concession after concession, but you have to remember I was engaged in real-politik here. I was not in a position to take a strictly ethical stance. What I took was a strictly maternal one and on that score I have no regrets.
Because Bram was right about Leo and Harry being happy. They were really happy. I even saw them being nice to each other, like proper brothers in a book – I mean, not quite Swallows and Amazons, but nice by their standards.
There was a cold snap in early December and Trinity Avenue was a picture of iced shrubbery and shimmering mists. Christmas was in the air, always my favourite time of year. Once home from school, the boys preferred to stay there, abandoning the garden for the living room, with its wood burner and burrows of fur throws. Seeing them snuggled up together, pink-cheeked and sleepy-eyed, I was convinced anew of the beauty of our bird’s nest. That half-witnessed skirmish with Toby was likely nothing compared to the conflict Bram and I would be exposing them to if we’d remained together.
At parents’ evening, for which Bram and I both cleared our diaries, neither Leo’s nor Harry’s teachers reported any evidence of the kind of anxiety or disruptive behaviour often noticed when a child’s parents have recently separated.
‘Whatever you’re doing at home, carry on doing it,’ Harry’s teacher Mrs Carver said. ‘He’s a real bright spark.’
Buoyed, Bram and I arranged to go to the end-of-term Christmas carol concert together.
Bram, Word document
Even as I plotted to steal their future from them, I prioritized the boys. For the first time in their lives, I attended every last school event of the festive season, even Harry’s drop-in Christmas decorations session, from which every parent departed for his day’s meetings with glitter in his ears. Work was no longer relevant – I’d be gone soon – and wherever possible I delegated or cancelled or passed the buck. Three times in December I called in sick or left early unwell (not entirely dishonest, since nausea was never far away).
‘I think there’s something wrong with me,’ I told Neil (again, not entirely dishonest). ‘It’s maybe some sort of virus.’
‘So long as that’s really what it is and you’re not just taking the piss,’ he said, which was his equivalent of a first warning. The situation was not helped by my decision to skip work Christmas drinks in favour of the boys’ carol concert in the last week of term.
‘Quitter,’ Neil said, which we both knew was how Keith Richards baited Ronnie Woods when he checked himself into rehab.
If only addiction were my greatest problem, I thought, woefully. The effects of rock ’n’ roll excess.
The carol concert almost undid me. ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear’ was Fi’s favourite and, by chance, the children sang it as their finale, their sweet, hopeful little voices almost too much to bear. It was the closest I came to breaking down in public.
‘Absolutely gorgeous,’ Fi said, as the classes filed down the aisle afterwards. ‘Were you filming that, Bram?’
‘Just the last song,’ I said. ‘It was allowed, wasn’t it? All the other dads were doing it.’
‘Yes, I think so. Anyway, I’m not a security guard.’
There was a message there, I thought, or at least chose to think. She was saying she’d finished threatening war and now she wanted a return to the peace process.
We waited for the pew to clear before we shuffled out. To my right, there was a fresco showing the trial of some martyr or other and in all my years as the son of a god-fearing mother, I had never felt such a sense of connection in a church as I did then.
‘In the spirit of goodwill to all men,’ I said to Fi, ‘can I ask you a favour?’ Only a man who no longer has anything to lose makes a wish that he has never been less likely to be granted. ‘It’s the last one I’ll ever ask you,’ I added.
She rolled her eyes. ‘There’s no need to overdo it, Bram, you’re not terminally ill. What is it?’
‘Could I have the boys for Christmas? It would . . . it would mean a lot to me.’
Because it might be the last time. It will be the last time. This time next year, I’ll be on trial like our friend the saint, or in prison or living in a hole in the ground like a terrorist. I hadn’t decided on my current course of action then – that presented itself later in a near-holy moment of revelation – but presumed I would want to carry on living, however pitifully.